Today is the birthday
… of U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The Senator is 85.
… of actress Jeanne Moreau. She’s 81. Moreau is best known for French New Wave films Jules and Jim (1962) and The Bride Wore Black (1968). Roger Ebert:
This is ridiculous, I told myself. You’ve interviewed Ingmar Bergman. Robert Mitchum. John Wayne. You got through those okay. Why should you be scared of Jeanne Moreau? Simply because she’s the greatest movie actress of the last 20 years? Simply because she’s made more good films for great directors than anybody else? Simply because something in her face and manner has fascinated you since you sat through “Jules and Jim” twice in a row? She’s only human; it’s not like she’s a goddess.
But I suspected that she was.
… of Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. The poet and playwright is 79.
… of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, 56.
… of Princess Caroline of Monaco, 52.
… of Mariska Hargitay. Jayne Mansfield’s daughter is 45. (She was in the car when her mother was killed in 1967.) Ms. Hargitay plays Detective Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
It’s the birthday of Humphrey Bogart, born on this day in 1899. Bogart was nominated for the best actor Oscar for Casablanca, The Caine Mutiny and The African Queen; he won for The African Queen. According to The Writer’s Almanac (2004):
[Bogart] was expelled from Massachusetts’ Phillips Academy and immediately joined the Navy to fight in World War I, serving as a ship’s gunner. One day, while roughhousing on the ship’s wooden stairway, he tripped and fell, and a splinter became lodged in his upper lip; the result was a scar, as well as partial paralysis of the lip, resulting in the tight-set mouth and lisp that became one of his most distinctive onscreen qualities.
And, born on this date in 1910, was Django Reinhardt. the first significant jazz figure in Europe — and the most influential European in jazz to this day. Play Jazz Guitar.com has some interesting background:
A violinist first and a guitarist later, Jean Baptiste “Django” Reinhardt grew up in a gypsy camp near Paris where he absorbed the gypsy strain into his music. A disastrous caravan fire in 1928 badly burned his left hand, depriving him of the use of the fourth and fifth fingers, but the resourceful Reinhardt figured out a novel fingering system to get around the problem that probably accounts for some of the originality of his style. According to one story, during his recovery period, Reinhardt was introduced to American jazz when he found a 78 RPM disc of Louis Armstrong’s “Dallas Blues” at an Orleans flea market. He then resumed his career playing in Parisian cafes until one day in 1934 when Hot Club chief Pierre Nourry proposed the idea of an all-string band to Reinhardt and Grappelli. Thus was born the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, which quickly became an international draw thanks to a long, splendid series of Ultraphone, Decca and HMV recordings.
The Red Hot Jazz Archive has some on-line recordings of the Quintette of the Hot Club of France.
Edouard Manet, an artist whose works include both the Realist and Impressionist traditions of 19th-century France, was born on this date in 1832. Click here to view Manet’s painting “On the Beach” (1873) and here for his painting of Monet in his floating studio (1874).